Website Name

Year Published

Title

URL

Access Date

August 02, 2015

Publisher

A+E Networks

On this day in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson is picketed by woman suffragists in front of the White House, who demand that he support an amendment to the Constitution that would guarantee women the right to vote.

Wilson had a history of lukewarm support for women’s suffrage, although he paid lip service to suffragists’ demands during political campaigns and greeted previously peaceful suffrage demonstrators at the White House with decorum. He was also a former teacher at a women’s college and the father of two daughters who considered themselves “suffragettes.” During the 1912 presidential campaign against Theodore Roosevelt, Wilson and his opponent agreed on many reform measures such as child-labor laws and pro-union legislation. They differed, however, on the subject of women’s suffrage, as Roosevelt was in favor of giving women the vote.

According to the Library of Congress’ American Memory archives, Wilson rode out of the White House gates on the morning of August 28 with his wife at his side and tipped his hat toward the protestors as usual. By this time, though, the suffragists had become increasingly disruptive and brandished anti-World War I slogans on their placards in addition to pleas for the vote and later that day the protestors and outraged bystanders who supported the war clashed. Many of the women were arrested and thrown in jail. Some of the jailed suffragists went on a hunger strike and were force-fed by their captors. Wilson, appalled by the hunger strikes and worried about negative publicity for his administration, finally agreed to a suffrage amendment in January 1918. Two years later, toward the end of Wilson’s second presidential term, Congress passed the 19th Amendment, officially giving women the right to vote.

Also on this day

After four years of separation, Charles, Prince of Wales and heir to the British throne, and his wife, Princess Diana, formally divorce.
On July 29, 1981, nearly one billion television viewers in 74 countries tuned in to witness the marriage of Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, to Lady Diana...

On this day in 1774, Elizabeth Ann Bayley is born in New York City. She went on to found the first Catholic school and the first female apostolic community in the United States. She was also the first American-born saint beatified by the Roman Catholic Church.
Elizabeth Ann Bayley was born...

Charles Stewart Rolls, the pioneering British motorist, aviator and co-founder (with Henry Royce) of the Rolls-Royce Ltd. luxury automobile company, is born on August 28, 1877, in London’s upscale Mayfair district.
The third son of Lord and Lady Llangattock, who had their ancestral seat in Monmouth, Wales, Rolls was a...

Union General Alfred Terry is promoted from brigadier general to major general of the United State Volunteers.
A native of Connecticut, Terry studied law and became a clerk of the New Haven Superior Court before the war. He was a colonel in the Second Connecticut when the war began, and his...

At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, tens of thousands of protesters against the Vietnam War battle police in the streets while the Democratic Party tears itself to shreds concerning a platform statement on Vietnam. In one day and night, the Cold War consensus that had dominated American thinking since...

The bodies of Tracy Paules and Manuel Taboada are discovered at the Gatorwood Apartments, near the campus of the University of Florida. Their murders came two days after the discovery that three young female students had been killed and mutilated in two separate locations near the campus. The serial killer...

On this day in 2006, Warren Jeffs, the leader of a polygamist sect of Mormons, is arrested by a highway patrol officer during a traffic stop in Nevada. At the time of his arrest, Jeffs was facing charges in Arizona and Utah of arranging marriages between men and underage girls....

An air show involving military jets at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany turns tragic on this day in 1988 when three jets collide in mid-air and fall into the crowd. Sixty-nine of the 100,000 spectators died and hundreds more were injured.
Toward the end of the NATO-sponsored show on August...

King Cetshwayo, the last great ruler of Zululand, is captured by the British following his defeat in the British-Zulu War. He was subsequently sent into exile. Cetshwayo’s defiance of British rule in southern Africa led to Britain’s invasion of Zululand in 1879.In 1843, Britain succeeded the Boers as the rulers...

While visiting family in Money, Mississippi, 14-year-old Emmett Till, an African American from Chicago, is brutally murdered for flirting with a white woman four days earlier. His assailants–the white woman’s husband and her brother–made Emmett carry a 75-pound cotton-gin fan to the bank of the Tallahatchie River and ordered him...

On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., the African American civil rights movement reaches its high-water mark when Martin Luther King, Jr., speaks to about 250,000 people attending the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The demonstrators–black and white, poor and rich–came together in the nation’s capital to...

On this day in 1968, at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, tens of thousands of Vietnam War protesters battle police in the streets, while the Democratic Party falls apart over an internal disagreement concerning its stance on Vietnam. Over the course of 24 hours, the predominant American line of...

Director John Huston dies of pneumonia at age 81 on this day in 1987, after a lifelong career in entertainment.
Huston was the son of actor Walter Huston, a vaudeville performer who began appearing in films in 1929. John Huston performed on the vaudeville circuit from age three. As a teenager,...

Canadian author Robertson Davies is born on this day in the town of Thamesville in Ontario, Canada.
Davies was the son of a publisher and politician who owned the Canadian newspaper the Peterborough Examiner. He attended college in Ontario and later in Oxford, England. He stayed in England after finishing his...

If the legendary gospel vocalist Mahalia Jackson had been somewhere other than the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on this day in 1963, her place in history would still have been assured purely on the basis of her musical legacy. But it is almost impossible to imagine Mahalia Jackson having...

Convinced they will have a better chance surviving the desert than the raging rapids that lay ahead, three men leave John Wesley Powell’s expedition through the Grand Canyon and scale the cliffs to the plateau above.
Though it turned out the men had made a serious mistake, they can hardly be...

On this day in 1977, Brazilian soccer superstar Pelé leads the New York Cosmos to victory in the Soccer Bowl, the championship of the North American Soccer League (NASL). With the help of international talent on its rosters, the NASL enjoyed surprising success in the mid-to-late 1970s in the United...

It is reported in three Soviet newspapers that North Vietnamese pilots are undergoing training in a secret Soviet air base to fly supersonic interceptors against U.S. aircraft. This only confirms earlier reports that the Soviets had initiated close relations with North Vietnam after a visit by Soviet Premier Aleksei...

Reverend Thomas Lee Hayes, speaking for the National Mobilization Committee, announces that there will be a massive protest march on October 21 in Washington. In the Senate, Mike Mansfield (D-Montana) made a proposal endorsed by 10 other senators to bring a peace plan before the United Nations.

The Democratic National Convention in Chicago endorses the Johnson administration’s platform on the war in Vietnam and chooses Vice President Hubert Humphrey as the party’s nominee for president. The decision on the party platform resulted in a contentious three-hour debate inside the convention hall.
Outside, a full-scale riot erupted,...

The U.S. Air Force gets its first ace (a designation traditionally awarded for five enemy aircraft confirmed shot down) since the Korean War. Captain Richard S. Ritchie, flying with his “backseater” (radar intercept officer), Captain Charles B. DeBellevue, in an F-4 out of Udorn Air Base in Thailand, shoots down...

On August 28, 1914, World War I spreads from land to sea when the first major naval battle of the conflict breaks out between British and German ships in the North Sea, near the northern coast of Germany.
The battle occurred in a partially enclosed body of water known as Heligoland...

On this day in 1941, more than 23,000 Hungarian Jews are murdered by the Gestapo in occupied Ukraine.
The German invasion of the Soviet Union had advanced to the point of mass air raids on Moscow and the occupation of parts of Ukraine. On August 26, Hitler displayed the joys of...